Warlord

Book 5: Danny Black

by Chris Ryan

Genres: Thrillers

Synopsis

When the SAS takes on the Narcos, there can be only one winner.

Set in 2011 in Mexico and London, Warlord is based on real events. Series hero Danny Black leads an SAS squad on loan to the CIA and sent to the Mexican border. The old Colombian drug gangs are being driven out by New Mexican gangs and their crack killing teams, called the Zitas. This is leading to a new, unprecedented flood of heroin engulfing Southern American states. Danny's squad is to take the war to the Zitas, who have received Special Forces training, and to assassinate their mysterious leader.

Danny's younger brother is a junkie, and it will soon become apparent that the Zitas have a very long reach.

Release date: August 10, 2017

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 400

Sample

Prologue

Sierra Madre Oriental. Mexico. 2011.

When Mikey saw the roadblock up ahead, he knew there was going to be trouble.

Mikey looked like your average stoner kid, fresh of out college. Shoulder-length hair. Wispy beard. Surf shorts and a Motorpsycho T-shirt. Sandals.

But appearances can be deceptive. Mikey had never smoked a joint or snorted a line. He’d drunk a single bottle of Coors Light on his sixteenth birthday and not touched the stuff since. After this road trip through Mexico, he’d be returning home to take up his place at Virginia Theological Seminary. The first step on his path to the priesthood.

Mikey’s friends had told him to avoid this part of Mexico. His father too. It was cartel country. Lawless. Violent. Stick to Mexico City, they said. Guanajuato. Playa del Carmen. The safe places. Mikey listened carefully to their warnings, before deciding that he would trust in his faith. In the goodness of his fellow man.

He had, however, agreed not to travel these roads after dark. Everyone agreed that would be foolish. Even Mikey.

Now he was beginning to wish he’d listened to what they said about daytime travel too.

As the bus slowed down, Michael craned his neck to see through the bus windscreen. The roadblock came into clearer view. An articulated lorry, bodywork corroded and tyres burned out, lay across the road at right angles. Big white letters were graffitied across its side. Mikey could make out the word muertos and a huge letter Z. And he could see armed men sitting atop the lorry. For a moment, he wondered if they were army personnel.

Then he looked around at his fellow travellers.

They were all male, and all Mexican – Mikey was the only American on the bus. They were clearly poor. Their jeans were torn and their T-shirts grimy and saturated with sweat. Work clothes. One of them, sitting two seats ahead of Mikey, was making the sign of the cross. Another, several seats behind, was muttering to himself and looking at the floor.

The bus came to a halt, but the engine continued to tick over. A passenger in the rear seat called something out in Spanish to the driver. Mikey, who could speak a little of the language, understood what he had said. ‘Go back, cabrón! Don’t stop! Can’t you see who it is?’

Too late. Two gunmen were hammering on the entrance door with the butts of their rifles. Mikey felt his bowels go weak. The driver stumbled out of his seat and wrenched the door open. If he thought he would gain some goodwill by being compliant, he was wrong. As the two men barged their way in, one of them struck the butt of his rifle against the driver’s jaw. He collapsed, bleeding from the mouth.

‘Okay, pendejos!’ one of the men barked in Spanish. ‘Get out the bus.’

Nobody moved. Mikey assumed the others were, like him, paralysed by reluctance and terror.

The men gave it five seconds. Then, without another warning, one of them turned his back on the passengers and pulled the driver up from the dirty floor of the bus. He slammed him face forward against the windscreen. Mikey saw the driver’s head pressed sideways against the glass, his hands palm outwards on either side. The gunman raised his weapon. The barrel was no more than a foot from the driver’s head. He fired. The shocking, deafening report penetrated Mikey to the core. The driver collapsed. His brain matter, like jelly, left a thick goo on the blood-spattered windscreen. The glass had splintered at the point where the round penetrated his head and cracked into the glass. Mikey felt himself retch, and had to cover his hand with his mouth.

‘Get out the bus!’ the other gunman repeated.

This time there was no hesitation. The passengers snapped to their feet and pressed their way out of the bus. Mikey included. Sandwiched between the other passengers, he got a whiff of urine. Someone had wet themselves with fear and Mikey had to try hard to stop himself doing the same. He averted his eyes as he passed the butchered body of the driver and stumbled down the steps of the bus on to the hard-baked ground outside.

The midday sun was dazzling. The dry heat caught the back of his throat. A heat haze rose from the metal bulk of the graffitied lorry. Beyond it, he saw the mountains of the Sierra Madre, grey and rocky against the piercing blue sky. A few metres from where the bus was parked was a roadside shrine, one of many that Mikey had seen on his journey. This one was in the form of the Virgin Mary, gaudy and brightly coloured, a metre high and housed in a wooden casing with a pitched roof. From the corner of his eye he saw some of his fellow passengers making the sign of the cross. He hurriedly did the same to stop himself standing out. The gunmen lined them up against the side of the bus, shouting several at a time. Mikey couldn’t work out what they were saying. His ears were still ringing from the noise of the gunshot. But through his half-closed eyes he could see one of the men was hanging back maybe ten metres.

He had the features of a man in early middle age: close-cropped black hair, a pencil-thin moustache and eyebrows that pointed up at the sides, as though he was constantly asking a question. While everyone else’s lips were dried and cracked, his were moist. His eyes were black, and there was a deadness to them that chilled Mikey far more than even the sight of the driver had done. He wore jeans, leather boots and a white vest that showed impressive upper arm muscles. The arms themselves were covered with tattoos. He stepped toward the line of terrified passengers, his own rifle hanging loosely from a strap around his neck. It was obvious, from the way the other gunmen got out of his way, that he was the main guy.

The man stood two metres in front of the centre of the line. There was a moment’s silence. Mikey was able to make out the tattoos more clearly. On one arm he saw a grotesque angel of death wearing a red military beret and pointing a gun. Beneath it, in an ornate Gothic font, the text: Z1.

The man spoke in quiet – almost whispered – Spanish.

‘We’re going to play a game,’ he said.

He turned to the nearest gunman. ‘Choose two of them,’ he said.

‘Yes, Z1,’ the gunman replied. He stepped toward the line of passengers, grabbed the two nearest and dragged them so they were standing in front of the roadside shrine. One of them was an older man, perhaps in his sixties, with dark leathery skin and a lean, lined face. The other was much younger – twenty, perhaps, certainly no older than Mikey himself – but not in nearly such good shape as the older man. He had a noticeable double chin, and those parts of his upper arm that were visible below his T-shirt were flabby and without definition.

‘The game is called, “Who will be the next hitman?” ’ the man called Z1 announced. He looked around on the ground and found two flinty stones, each about the size of a grapefruit. He gave one to the older man, one to the younger. ‘The rules are very simple,’ he said. ‘You fight in pairs. The one who survives will join us. The one who doesn’t . . . won’t.’

He looked to the two passengers holding the stones and nodded.

At first, neither man moved. They stood, three metres apart, and stared at the stones in their hands.

‘Fight, pendejos!’ one of the gunmen shouted. Mikey recognised his voice as belonging to the man who had ordered them off the bus, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the two reluctant gladiators. The younger man was trembling, licking his lips and glancing left and right, as if trying to decide whether to run. The older man was still staring at the stone in his hands. He was as still and craggy as the mountains in the distance.

‘Come on, man,’ he muttered. ‘I have a family. Children.’

Z1 gave a harsh bark of laughter. ‘Good!’ he said. ‘So if you don’t put up a proper fight, we can hang them from the nearest bridge with their guts spilling out.’

The other gunmen laughed.

Mikey could see there were tears brimming in the older man’s eyes now. He took a tentative step forward and held up the stone so it was level with his shoulder. The younger man stepped backwards. ‘Don’t do it, señor,’ he breathed. ‘We don’t have to fight.’

‘Of course we have to fight,’ the older man said. ‘Don’t you understand who these people are?’

‘But . . .’

‘I’m sorry. My family . . .’

The older man raised the stone a little higher. With a speed that belied his age, he moved on the younger man and cracked the stone down hard on the side of his head. His victim sank to his knees, and there was an involuntary moan from the rest of the passengers. Z1 watched the proceedings with the same dead look in his eyes. The old man looked over his shoulder at him.

‘To the death,’ said Z1.

Mikey averted his eyes after the second blow to the younger man’s head. But he couldn’t close his ears. He heard each of the following three cracks of stone against skull, followed by a horrible silence that could only mean one thing.

Ten seconds passed. Mikey dared to look up again. He wished he hadn’t. The younger man was sprawled on the ground. His head was a pulp. The ground was stained a dark brown. There were spatters of blood on the statue of the Virgin. The older man was looking in disbelief at the rock in his bloodied hands. Tears were now streaming down his grizzled face.

Z1 nodded at one of his men, who stepped over to the older man and ushered him at gunpoint toward the roadblock.

‘Okay, pendejos,’ Z1 said. ‘Who’s next?’

All of the passengers, Mikey included, bowed their heads. Z1 walked slowly along the line, looking each man up and down. Bile hit the back of Mikey’s throat. He prayed hard. He tried not to catch Z1’s eye as he inspected each of the travellers. But he found it impossible. He felt giddy when he saw a small smile cross Z1’s lips.

‘What have we got here?’ Z1 said. ‘A yanqui?’

Mikey backed away, but there was only half a metre between him and the bus. Z1 gave an instruction to his men. One of them approached, holding the bloodied stone that the older man had used to kill his victim.

‘Hold out your hand, yanqui,’ he said.

Mikey swallowed hard. Then he shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, in hoarse, stuttering Spanish.

Z1’s expression did not change. There was a silence.

‘You want to go, yanqui?’ he said.

Mikey drew a deep, steadying breath. He nodded.

‘Then go,’ Z1 said. He pointed back along the road down which the bus had travelled. ‘Go back to yanqui country, where you belong.’

Mikey edged away from him. He glanced back toward the terrified passengers and their tormentors. From the corner of his vision he noticed that already there was a fly buzzing around the head of the dead man. Nobody spoke.

‘Them too,’ Mikey said. ‘Let them get back on the bus. Let them leave.’

Z1 turned to the passengers. ‘Does anybody else want to leave?’ he said. His voice was very quiet, but there was no doubt that everybody heard it.

None of the passengers responded. They all looked at the ground. It was as if nobody had spoken.

‘Only you, yanqui,’ Z1 said. ‘So you should go.’

Mikey swallowed again. His fervent, silent prayer was being answered. Maybe, if he was fast enough, he could find a member of the Federales. The Federal Police. He’d heard that members of the regular police force were routinely in the pockets of the cartels. The Federales were a breed apart: highly armed, highly trained and desperate to stamp out the cartels. Maybe, if he could alert them, he could stop this awful thing from happening.

He turned his back on them. The road stretched northwards into the distance, the horizon shaky in the heat haze. He took several hesitant steps away from the others. There was a tingling sensation at the back of his neck. It urged him to start running.

He had run maybe fifteen metres when he heard the report of the gun. At the same time, a thump at the back of his right knee, as though someone had kicked him there. He fell hard to the ground.

Seconds later, the pain hit.

Mikey had never known agony like it. Sharp, jagged pain that pierced his whole leg. He looked toward his knee and was horrified to see blood trying to pool around him, and being sucked up by the dry ground. Everything started to spin. He was aware of movement from where the others were standing. Vaguely, he could make out one of the passengers moving toward him, with Z1 following a couple of metres behind.

Only when the passenger – a teenage boy – was standing above him did Mikey see that he was holding the bloodied stone. The statue of the Virgin wavered in the heat haze several metres beyond him.

Mikey tried to say the word ‘please’, but instead he vomited from pain and fear. The kid with the stone swore under his breath, clearly disgusted. But then he looked toward Z1, who was standing grimly at the scene, his hands loosely holding his weapon.

Mikey knew what was coming. He tried to scramble away, but it was useless: his leg was a heavy weight and the pain was shrieking through him. He tried to speak, to beg the guy not to do it.

But the kid had no choice.

He knelt down by Mikey’s side and lifted the stone.

The first blow cracked against Mikey’s cheekbone. Mikey inhaled sharply, breathing in a lungful of dry dust through his mouth just as a burst of blood and mucus exploded from his nose. The young man muttered a word of apology under his breath. In that pain-racked instant, Mikey thought he understood why he was saying sorry. He had intended to hit Mikey further up the side of his face, at the level of his temple, because then it would be over more quickly.

Now he rested the stone carefully against Mikey’s temple, before raising it about fifty centimetres and preparing to strike.

Over the young man’s shoulder, Mikey saw Z1 looking down at him.

‘Adiós, yanqui,’ he said.

They were the last words Mikey ever heard. The young man slammed the stone down against his skull. Somewhere, among the sickening, spinning pain, he felt the bone splinter.

Then everything went dark. Mikey’s troubles were over as quickly as they had begun.

 

Mikey’s humiliation did not end with his death.

The man who called himself Z1 stood above the young man’s corpse. He turned to one of his men. ‘Bring the bag,’ he said. Thirty seconds later, a heavy bag fell at his feet. His guy opened it up. It contained knives. Twenty, maybe more. Long blades, short blades, broad blades and narrow. Plastic handles and wooden. He selected one at random. It was an old kitchen knife. He held the blade in a hammer fist, then stabbed it hard into the young man’s torso. There was a slight resistance from the gristle and bone, but he had stabbed hard and the blade sank into the body up to the hilt. Blood oozed from the wound, but only a little.

Z1 turned to his guy. ‘Everyone does it,’ he said.

His men organised their prisoners into a line. They forced each one at gunpoint to take a knife and stab it into the corpse. Most of them looked away as they did it. Some cried. But nobody dared to disobey. Within five minutes, all twenty knives were sticking out of Mikey’s body at different angles.

The prisoners lined up against the wall again. One of Z1’s men took photographs of the desecrated body. Z1 turned to the prisoners, raised his hands and shouted, ‘El puerco espín!’

The porcupine.

‘Who else wants to join the porcupine?’ he demanded.

Nobody replied. Everybody gazed at their shoes.

‘Muy bien!’ Z1 said. ‘The ones who survive will bury the ones who die, here behind the roadside shrine. Let us continue with our little game, shall we?’

ONE

Walthamstow, North London.

1500 Hours GMT.

For an SAS man, situational awareness is as instinctive as breathing. After seven years in the Regiment, it was second nature for Danny Black to absorb and process every last detail of his surroundings. He did it almost without thinking.

So as he stood at the base of a thirty-storey tower block, which was as grey and unwelcoming as the sky, he was aware of everything. The graffiti that was concentrated on the northwest side of the building, telling him that was where gang members would likely hang out at night. The net curtain that twitched on the second floor. The workmen, barely visible on the roof. The grime music that filled the air. Some of it was pumping from the windows of the lower floors. Some came from the direction of the car park that surrounded the tower block.

In his peripheral vision Danny was acutely conscious of the three stocky guys in their early twenties sitting on the bonnet of the BMW. The music – 50 Cent – came from their car. They were eyeing Danny, threats in their gaze. Fine. They could look at him all they wanted. He’d only need to deal with them if they made the mistake of forcing his hand.

A helicopter passed overhead. A single glance told Danny it was a Bell Longranger, almost definitely civilian. Nothing like the military heliplanes in which he’d been on manoeuvres over the capital weeks before – part of the SAS’s show of force in the wake of certain terror threats. He dragged his attention back down to earth. A white Transit van pulled out of its parking space 25 metres to Danny’s left. Written on the side were the words TJ Painting and Decorating – one call will sort it all.

Danny recorded every feature of his environment automatically. Situational awareness. The most important part of his job. Because a Regiment man doesn’t like surprises.

Not that he was here on military business. Today’s job was personal.

He entered the ground floor of the tower block. It was several degrees colder here. The concrete walls and floor made his footsteps echo. He trod more quietly, tuning his ears into the potential sound of an echo that would indicate the presence of another person. There was none. The door to the lift was jammed half open, the lift itself stuck a couple of feet from the ground. A strip light flickered overhead. There was an inevitable scent of stale urine.

He headed to the staircase at the corner of the building and climbed to the fifth floor, stopping at each landing to check up and down the stairwell. No sign of anyone. Good.

On the fifth-floor landing he moved through the creaking swing doors to find two corridors heading off at right angles. An old plaque indicated that apartments 500–515 were situated to the right, 516–530 straight ahead. He went straight ahead. His tip-off had told him he needed apartment 525.

The noise in the corridor was a mixture of blaring TVs and more music. Danny blocked it out. As he passed apartment 519, the door opened. A thin girl, probably no more than 16, with prominent black rings under her eyes, looked out. She wore ripped trousers and nothing but a filthy bra on top. Danny felt conscious that he must appear different to most guys she saw – healthy-looking, chiselled, with his dark hair and black leather jacket. She slammed the door shut again almost immediately. Danny continued walking.

There was no noise from 525. Danny put his ear to the door to check. Complete silence. Slowly and quietly he tried the door handle. It was locked, but that didn’t matter. The lock was cheap and old. He pulled out his wallet and removed the credit-card-sized lock-picking set he carried everywhere with him. He inserted the tiny tension wrench and applied slight pressure to it. Then he inserted the L rake and gently scraped the top of the lock. He had the first four pins manipulated in a couple of seconds. The fifth pin was trickier and took him ten seconds to locate. The lock clicked quietly open.

Danny nudged the bottom of the door with his foot. It swung ajar. A disgusting smell hit his nose. Musty. Rotten. The air inside this flat was fetid and humid. Although there were no lights on, and there was still no sound, he caught a whiff of human sweat that told him the place was occupied. He stepped inside.

There was a bathroom straight ahead of him. No seat on the toilet. A mildewed shower curtain hanging from a broken rail over the bath. To the right, a kitchen. To the left, a closed door.

He scoped out the kitchen first. It was humming with fruit flies attracted by the dirty plates piled in the sink. Somebody was sitting at a small, square table. Their head was resting, forehead down, on the table. Danny couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman. Short, greasy hair. Dirty blue sweatshirt. Next to him or her was a burned-down tea-light candle, a teaspoon, some tin foil and a used hypodermic syringe. The usual paraphernalia of a smack addict.

Danny could tell this wasn’t the person he was looking for. So he left the kitchen and headed back toward the closed door.

The door was stiff, because it was ill-fitting against the carpet. It opened on to a room that contained a single old sofa, and three people. Like the guy or girl in the kitchen, they were comatose. One – a young woman – was splayed on the sofa. She wore a purple jumper, and nothing on the lower half of her body. Her legs were a mess of bruises, split veins and needle marks. On the floor, leaning against the sofa at her feet, was a naked man, his skin dotted with tattoos and similar needle marks on his arms.

In the centre of the room, lying on the floor, fully clothed at least, was Danny’s brother.

Danny hadn’t seen Kyle for two years. He’d have been happy not to see him for another two. But their father had begged Danny to find out where the idiot was, or if he was even still alive. As a Regiment man, Danny had enough police contacts to track down a helpless junkie with a history of petty crime to feed his habit. Twenty-four hours after making his first enquiry he knew exactly what counts the police wanted to speak to him about, and where they would look for him if they had the time and resources for such low-level stuff.

So here he was.

The floor was strewn with needles, cigarette lighters and condoms. Danny stepped over them, bent down, grabbed the top of Kyle’s arm with one hand and pulled him to his feet. At first he was just a dead weight. After a couple of seconds his eyes flickered open. He didn’t seem to recognise Danny, and instinctively tried to swipe him away. Danny simply pushed him so he stumbled toward the open door. He glanced at the semi-naked couple on the sofa. They hadn’t even stirred.

He pushed Kyle out into the corridor. Standing by the open door was a figure. Danny immediately recognised the dirty blue sweatshirt of the comatose person in the kitchen. Narrow nose, crazy eyes. He was holding the hypodermic syringe in his right hand like a weapon. Aggressively.

‘Choo fuckin’ doin’? . . .’ he growled. He could barely get his words out straight.

It was hardly a fight. But if you’re going to start a fight, you’d better finish it. Danny strode up to the wild-eyed junkie, knocked the syringe hand away with one arm and kneed him in the groin. When he bent over in agony, Danny raised his knee and cracked it against the underside of his chin. It knocked the junkie out cold. Danny had struck him harder than he intended, but finding his brother in this shit hole made him angry. The junkie got the sharp end of that anger.

He turned back, grabbed Kyle and yanked him out of the flat.

In the outside corridor, Danny pushed his brother roughly toward the staircase. Kyle stumbled several metres. When Danny caught up, he pushed him again. At the top of the stairs he forced his brother against the wall. ‘Try to run away from me, Kyle, I’ll break your arm. Got it?’

Kyle looked hungrily back toward the flat. Danny sensed he was weighing up his hunger for another hit with his fear of his brother – Kyle had seen what Danny could do to a man. He nodded and started to stagger down the stairs.

‘Best decision you’ve made all year,’ Danny muttered.

A minute later they were back outside the tower block. Nothing had changed. The music was still blaring. The BMW guys were still there. They were staring aggressively at Danny, who felt Kyle try to wriggle out of his grasp, like a dog straining for his owner. ‘Guys!’ Kyle shouted. ‘Guys!’

The men were staring aggressively at Danny, shoulders back, chin jutting out. One of them stepped forward. ‘What you doing with our best customer?’ he growled.

Danny sensed the fight was coming, which meant he had to attack first. It was hard-wired in him. He stopped a metre away from the guy who’d shouted out, let go of Kyle, grabbed the man’s little finger and snapped it hard to the side. The guy’s eyes widened in sudden pain and he doubled over. He pushed the guy back toward his mates with a sharp jab from the heel of his hand. ‘You scumbags ever sell another wrap of H to this scumbag,’ he said, ‘our next conversation won’t be so polite.’

Silence. The guy with the broken finger was doubled over, gasping, but Danny could tell the others were judging whether to fight back. ‘If anything I just said isn’t clear, now’s the time to tell me,’ he said.

The threat hung in the air. Could go either way, Danny knew. They’d either attack or retreat. Either was fine with him.

One of the guys raised his palms in an ‘I’m backing away’ gesture. Danny nodded curtly, stepped backward a few paces, grabbed Kyle again, who was staring dumbly at the unfolding scene, and only turned his back on the trio when he was well out of their reach. As he strode away, still pulling Kyle, he used the side mirrors of some parked cars to watch the guys. They were getting into their BMW. They wouldn’t be giving him any more trouble.

Danny’s own vehicle – also a BMW, but older – was parked 50 metres beyond the tower block. He forced Kyle into the back seat, then took the wheel. Kyle tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t work.

‘Child lock, Kyle,’ Danny said. ‘For children.’ He knocked the car into first and drove off.

‘Where we going?’ Kyle said. His voice was reedy and cracked.

Danny didn’t answer. He manoeuvred the car off the estate and on to the main road alongside it. Five minutes after that, he was pulling up alongside Walthamstow police station. He climbed out of the car, its hazard lights flashing, and walked round to the passenger side, before dragging Kyle out on to the pavement and hoisting him up into the police station.

‘Kyle Black,’ Danny announced before the duty sergeant even had time to speak. ‘He’s wanted on three counts of aggravated burglary, one GBH. Frisk him and you’ll probably find he’s carrying something he shouldn’t.’

Kyle muttered a curse, but one look from Danny silenced him. He was scared of Danny, and with good reason. More than once, Kyle had called on Danny to dig him out of a hole. But you don’t call on an SAS man and expect the nonviolent approach. Kyle knew what his brother was. So he shrank against the wall as the duty sergeant approached him.

Danny didn’t want to see any more. He turned his back on his brother and left the police station.

Back in his car he took several deep breaths to calm himself. Then he picked up his phone and dialled a number. A frail voice answered.

‘Did you find him?’

‘Yeah, I found him.’

‘Where was he?’

‘You don’t want to know, Dad.’

‘I don’t need protecting, Danny.’

But that wasn’t true. Elderly, lonely and wheelchair-bound, with nothing but his memories of his army days to keep him company, Danny’s father did need protecting . . . from the reality of Kyle’s tawdry existence.

‘Where is he now?’ the old man asked.

‘Having a chat with the Old Bill.’

A pause.

‘He’ll be safe in custody?’

Danny didn’t answer immediately. The truth was that Kyle might find himself serving a short stretch, where he’d find it easier to get hold of the junk that had messed up his life than he would do on the street.

‘Yeah, Dad. They’ll get him clean.’

The old man let the lie pass without comment.

‘When can I see you?’ he asked. ‘What about that granddaughter of mine?’

Danny suppressed a wave of emotion. He couldn’t even see his daughter, so there was no way his dad could. Perhaps ever.

‘It’ll be a while. I have to go away.’

‘On a job?’

Danny didn’t reply.

‘Where are you going?’

‘You know I can’t tell you, Dad.’

Danny immediately heard the heat in his father’s voice. ‘Of course you can tell me, I’m your—’

‘Dad,’ Danny interrupted. ‘You know the rules. It’s for your benefit as well as mine.’

Another pause. Then:

‘Stay safe, son.’

Danny allowed himself a wry smile. Stay safe? He’d settle for staying alive. Safe was too much to ask for.

‘Sure Dad,’ he said. ‘Course I will.’

He hung up, checked his watch and then pulled out into the north London traffic. He had an appointment to keep, and he was late.

TWO

San Antonio, Texas. 120 miles from the Mexican Border.

1200 hours North American central time.

Jesús loved his wheels.

Like, loved them.

He’d driven the Range Rover Sport new out of the dealership in his home town of Nuevo Laredo a week ago and almost non-stop ever since. He drove it even when he had nowhere to go. He especially enjoyed crossing the US/Mexican border in it. The yanqui border guards gave him the usual trouble as he tried to enter the US. Normally he had to make do with waving his green card at them – Jesús’s mother was American. Now he could rub their noses in the fact he was driving a vehicle that they could only dream of owning on their pathetic salaries. ‘You want to get into another busine